


Outside the Street's on Fire

by trashwriter



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Glenn Rhee, Bisexual Glenn Rhee, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Daryl Dixon Needs a Hug, Demisexual Daryl Dixon, F/F, F/M, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Minor Lori Grimes/Shane Walsh, Pre-Canon, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, Slow Burn, Sophia Peletier Lives, Unplanned Pregnancy, female glenn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-24 14:14:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30073494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashwriter/pseuds/trashwriter
Summary: After her shift at the pizzeria, Glenn Rhee went into Lucky’s bar looking to play darts, pretend she was drinking, and maybe get laid. After driving all damn day to get to Atlanta, Daryl Dixon went into Lucky’s bar looking for a meal, a beer, and a sink where he could get washed up a little.In the morning, Glenn was meant to go to her second job at the convenience store. In the morning, Daryl was meant to pick-up his brother from the drunk tank in the 23rd precinct.And all of that would’ve happened, except that the world fell to pieces one day ahead of schedule.
Relationships: Daryl Dixon/Glenn Rhee, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	Outside the Street's on Fire

It was after midnight when Glenn parked her Camry in the back lot at Lucky’s, but she was still way too wired to even think of sleeping.

The last few days had been crazy. The news had been filled with reports about people getting sick with some new flu and attacking people in the street. The mayor and the governor had started advising people to stay indoors and stock up with enough food and water to last three days.

There had been floods of people in grocery stores and pharmacies engaging in a rash of panic-buying that made Thanksgiving weekend look like a regular Tuesday.

Despite all their shiny new groceries, people were mostly just ordering pizza.

Glenn had been pulling double-shifts for a couple of days since Jimmy quit abruptly, saying he was going home to Texas. She didn’t exactly mind, since she needed the money, but ye gods and little fishes, if she never had to smell another pizza again it might be too soon.

She was exhausted, it wasn’t the kind of exhaustion that could be solved with a nap or a cup of coffee though, she’d tried both, no what she needed was a little slice of normal.

When Sal had told her Lucky’s was still open and serving, Glenn could’ve kissed her.

Lucky’s wasn’t exactly a dive-bar, but it had all the good dive-bar accoutrements. Pool table, dart board, limited menu, and the prices were low enough that even a college student could afford to go there twice a week, particularly since she didn’t drink.

Glenn had tried to talk Sal and even Jeremy into coming out with her after they finished their shift and she passed the keys to the pizza-mobile over to Hab and Tony for the night, but they’d looked at her like she was crazy and told her firmly that they were heading home like sane individuals in the midst of a national crisis.

Their loss, Glenn told herself as she peeled out of her uniform shirt and tossed it in the back seat, she was going to have fun and relax for a half-second.

The sun had been down for long enough that the air was cool on her flushed skin as she slid out of her car and slipped the keys and her wallet in her pocket. She got three steps away from the door before she was doubling back and checking the silhouette of her hair in the dim reflection of the driver’s side window.

She’d been delivering pizzas since three in the afternoon with her inky black bob tucked under a cap, but she didn’t want to look like it. Satisfied that her hair was less hat-head and more artfully-rumpled, Glenn made her final beeline for the door.

She could almost feel the tension leave her shoulders as she slipped past the specials board and saw that “Lucky” Lou Redman was behind the bar, drying beer-steins with a fluffy-looking blue hand towel like she always was on Wednesday nights.

The bar was pretty empty, just a few of the local regulars and a scruffy looking guy inhaling a plate of nachos at one of the tables and sucking messily at his fingers. Well, there went her half-formed plan to get laid. Still, she was hungry and there was music playing.

“Hey Lou,” Glenn sighed, a helpless grin stretching her mouth. “How’s business?”

“Not looking any better since you walked in, girl,” Lou said in her thick drawl, offering her a small smile in return. “’Less you’re thinking a crisis might be a good time for a first drink?”

Lou waggled her eyebrows like offering a legal adult an alcoholic beverage was a salacious proposition and Glenn laughed a bit.

It felt good to laugh just laugh. Like levering a bit of the weight up off her chest. 

“I’ll have my usual, and a basket of cheesy fries if your kitchen’s still open,” Glenn said.

Lou hummed an acknowledgement.

“Fryer’s on but it’ll take a few, nothing’s prepped.”

“Fresh is good,” Glenn said, leaning up on her toes. “Fresh is great. Ooh, and I’ll take the darts too if the board is open.”

“Sure thing, just gimme a mo’.”

Lou poured her a glass of orange juice with grenadine and a couple of ice cubes, and Glenn took a sip while she waited for her to unearth the darts. It went down thick and sweet and refreshingly cool after her long shift and Glenn had to remind herself not to chug the whole thing in one go.

Paying five bucks for a glass of juice was already a little stupid when she could get a gallon for three ninety-nine at the convenience store if she really wanted it.

“Fifteen minutes for the fries,” Lou told her, passing the darts over. “Don’t take anyone’s eye out.”

“No promises,” Glenn chirped, even though her aim was pretty good and she’d never put a hole in the wall behind the board. 

Glenn claimed the table closest to the dart board by the simple expedient of putting her drink down onto it and hummed along to the Bruce Springsteen song on the radio. She couldn’t remember the proper words but the familiarity of the song teased at her brain, trying to convince her she knew it well enough to sing along when she didn’t.

The three darts were a solid weight in her hand and she ran her hands over the mutilated plastic fletching remembering the first time she’d won at darts.

Beginner’s luck, her girlfriend at the time had said as she handed over a fiver with a pout. And it had been, that time, but not anymore. Especially, not with Lou’s darts.

Glenn’s first throw glanced off the inner ring, sticking into the yellow of the single-bull, and Glenn stuck her tongue out.

Did she give herself a pass, or did she want to double-in? If she didn’t hit it this time she’d double-in on the outer ring, she bargained, running her thumb along the body of the red dart. 

She threw it with just a hair less force and was pleased to see it sticking into the little red dot in the center of the board.

Red really was her lucky color.

The game passed quickly after that. She kept score in her head, but the early-game bullseye had set the tone and she shot a near-perfect game of triples.

It wasn’t until Lou brought out her fries, that Glenn noticed that scruffy nacho guy was nursing another beer and watching her. She looked up as Lou set her basket down and she reached for her drink, and her eyes caught on his heavy-lidded blue gaze for a moment.

A little startled by the weight of that look, Glenn shoved three fries into her mouth and darted a glance at the mirrored wall behind the bar to get a better look at him without him noticing.

Her first impression stood up to a second look. He was scruffy. Tall and white but tan, in that indeterminate stage of ageing between twenty-five and forty but probably at least five years older than her with an uneven haircut and a blondish goatee. He was wearing heavy-weight work pants and boots and a clean but old chambray button down with the sleeves torn off.

He was handsome though, or maybe handsome was the wrong word for it. He was appealing, with his symmetrical face, strong jawline and muscley arms. But he was definitely blue-collar and possibly a redneck. Nothing like the fresh-faced college guys she usually looked at, or the good Korean boys her mom sometimes brought around for dinner when Glenn was home for the break.

She fluffed her hair a little bit and took a long swig of her drink, trying to decide if the sudden heat in her face was because she was interested or just flattered by the attention, when the door to the bar clanged open and a guy staggered in, bleeding.

He slammed the door shut hard behind him, fumbling with the lock until it clicked over. He backed away from the door as something heavy and meaty thunked into it, and just kept backing up, eyes wide and fixed on the door until he stumbled over a chair.

“Jesus, son,” said old Norm Beckett from his usual perch at the bar. “What happened?”

“She bit me!” the guy said. “She fucking bit me! All I did was ask her if they had any Pall Malls! What the fuck!”

“Calm the hell down!” Lou barked, throwing her dishtowel over one shoulder. “Start at the beginning.”

The guy blinked like Lou had asked him for the radius of the moon.

“Start at the beginning. What happened, exactly?”

“Went down to the store. Snuck outta bed. Shouldn’t have done it. Jessie’ll worry. Been trying to quit,” he babbled, dragging his good hand through his hair and smearing blood everywhere. “But I needed a cigarette and I was out, so I went down to the store. Of course, even though they were open the shelves were fucking bare so I asked the girl behind the desk and she grabbed on and bit me. Bit me real hard too, motherfuck!”

He showed them the ragged tear in his forearm like they would believe him.

Lou and the other bar flies were looking just as disturbed as Glenn felt. Outside someone was pounding rhythmically on the door.

The guy glanced back at the door nervously and then continued, speaking faster, but more quietly.

“She chased me across the street, a car hit her, I saw it! But she just got back up!” he said. “Like it was nothing she just got back up! She’s tweaking, man, gotta be on like PCP or some shit! You gotta call the cops!”

“I got it Lou,” said one of the other regulars, his phone already at his ear.

“I don’t like this,” Norm grunted. “All that talk about sick people biting folk, now a bit fella wanders in here? I’m thinking you should leave, son.”

“Man, you did not see this chick, okay,” the guy sputtered. “I can’t go back out there!”

“I’ve got a first-aid kit in the back,” Lou said, reluctantly. “You can clean up in the washroom while we wait for the cops. Back that way.”

“Thanks,” he said disappearing down the hall.

“Cops ain’t comin’, Lou,” said the guy on his phone, shell-shocked. “State of ‘mergency been declared, national guard rolled in this evening, they’re setting up blockades.”

This statement raised a storm of uneasy muttering and Glenn hugged her elbows, uncomfortably aware of how bare her arms were.

Norm was probably right, she realized.

This guy had probably been bitten by someone who was sick with this killer flu, he was probably infected. He might already be infectious.

The girl that had bitten him was still thumping on the door and she’d been joined by someone else who was making rasping growling noises. Outside somewhere there was a shout and the sound of breaking glass.

Lou turned on the TV above the bar that normally had the game playing. Everything had been cancelled though, for the last week, flights, concerts, football games, everything. The only thing on the TV was news, news, and bad news.

On the plus side it didn’t take them long to find a live news update.

“— _asking people to evacuate if they can safely do so, or to remain indoors and wait for rescue. Earlier this morning a representative from the Center for Disease Control, had this to say_.”

“ _No, at the moment we have very few leads on where this infection originated, or even what type of infection it is but we do know that it is actively transmitted through saliva. Those who have been bitten and died of the resulting fever invariably get back up and begin biting others to propagate the infection. Clinically these individuals are considered deceased, but the infection generates an electrical impulse that restarts the motor neurons and allows the body to move. That is why as a civilian if you come into close contact with a deceased, infected individual it is imperative that you avoid close contact. If close contact cannot be avoided partial or total destruction of the brain stem is the only way to stop the deceased from moving and infecting others_.”

“ _In English, Doc_!” someone called off screen.

“ _You need to shoot them in the head, or cave in their skull_ ,” the doctor on screen answered, snappishly adjusting his glasses.

The view switched back over to the newscaster who was looking a little green around the gills behind her wide desk.

“ _As hospitals and emergency medical stations are overrun with infected, and the death toll continues to climb, Atlanta Public Health officials are urging those who have been bitten or come into close contact with any of these ‘walkers’ to self-isolate and quarantine in their homes keeping a minimum distance of twelve feet from others at all times_. _As the number of cases both nationally and globally continue to climb epidemiologists warn that this outbreak is just beginning_.”

The TV switched off abruptly, the music too, and Glenn couldn’t help the noise of protest that made its way up and out of her throat, because they needed to hear this!

“Hell,” said Norm into the sudden quiet of the bar.

“I gotta go,” said the man with the bite, now covered with a patch of clean white gauze. “I gotta—”

He pushed past two of the other regulars, running for the back door.

“Lou?” barked one guy whose name Glenn thought might’ve been Terrence or Clarence.

“Let him go,” Lou croaked. “One less problem to worry about. Lord knows, we all got plenty tonight without taking on more.”

“What now?” Terrence-Clarence asked, looking around at his buddies.

No one had an answer for him, but after a long moment Lou cleared her throat and nodded decisively.

“Drinks are on me tonight,” she said roughly, already scraping her long red hair back into a tail. “Your tabs are cleared. Take a case of bottled water each, go out the back door, and go home to your families. I’m closing up.”

“Ma’am,” said the attractive redneck, he had a quiet rumbling voice like smoke and velvet, and a thick back-country accent to go with it. “Ain’t local, just meant to be in town for the day, pick up my brother. Any way I could hang around ‘til first light?”

“I’m sorry,” said Lou, and she really sounded it, but her voice was take-no-shit firm and Glenn knew there was a sawed-off shotgun under the counter if he got pushy.

She would never know what possessed her to say it, but watching him rub a hand over his mouth in resignation Glen blurted out: “You can come with me.”

His sharp blue eyes caught hers again.

Glenn knew it was probably more than a little stupid to invite a stranger over to her place while the world was falling apart even if it was only for a few hours.

“Glenn,” Lou said, sharp and incredulous.

Stupid, but it wasn’t like there was anything worth stealing in her shithole apartment and she’d been idly thinking of sleeping with him either fifteen minutes or a lifetime ago, she could definitely put him up on her couch.

“You serious?” he asked after a long moment, something wary in his expression like he was the one putting himself in danger entertaining this offer.

Glenn considered herself for a moment, before nodding.

“Yeah,” she said. “With that on the news. The police will be trying to get everyone off the streets, there’ll probably be looting.”

She darted a glance over at the front door where there was still a steady thudding.

Lou was already turning out the lights. Shutting down the fryer and the sanitizer. Pulling the security bars down over the windows.

“That said, you still keen on lettin’ some stranger into your place?” he said.

“You look pretty tough, some of my neighbors can be assholes,” Glenn said, even though that was really the least of what she’d been thinking about when she made the offer.

The excuse seemed to mollify him though, because the line of tension in his shoulders relaxed a fraction, and he made a low agreeable noise in the back of his throat.

“I’m Glenn, by the way. Glenn Rhee.”

“Daryl,” he said nodding.

“Parking lot’s still empty, Lou,” said Norm, grunting as he hefted a case of bottled water onto his good shoulder. “Y’all best be gettin’ on while that’s still the case. Imma head out.”

“Thanks, Norm,” Lou said. “I’ll call and let you know when we’re back open.”

The other regulars had trundled out already.

“Alright,” said Lou, holding up her phone. “Glenn Rhee, I want a phone call at eight am tomorrow morning tellin’ me you weren’t murdered in your sleep.”

She snapped a quick picture of her and Daryl standing in the bar, and Glenn blinked at the unexpected flash.

“Hey!”

“Boy, you got a last name?” Lou barked.

“Dixon,” Daryl rumbled.

“Listen up Daryl Dixon,” Lou said in a low serious voice. “I don’t hear from Glenn tomorrow, I’m taking your name and picture straight to the police. Every cop in Atlanta will be on your ass by eight-fifteen, and I will be marching my lily-white ass right over with my forty-five, you hear?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, girl,” Lou added, drawing Glenn into a short tight hug. “Be safe.”

“You too. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

She gestured for Daryl to follow her past the bathrooms to where Norm and the other guys left the door to Lou’s backroom propped open. There were a few more cases of bottled water up against the back wall and Glenn suddenly had the feeling that Lou put in a big order because she saw which way the wind was blowing.

Daryl moved past her, quiet and careful not to touch, hefting two cases into his arms with a grunt.

Glenn reached for the knob on the last door in the hall which was marked, fire exit and employee’s only.

“Wait,” he said. “Door swings out?”

“Yeah.”

“Open it just a bit, check if it’s still clear.”

This seemed like very sensible advice to Glenn, so she did, poking her head out to get a good look at the mostly empty parking lot.

“Shit,” she swore, letting the door swing mostly shut.

“What?”

“There’s someone out there loitering around in front of my car,” she said.

Daryl frowned.

“Just standin’ there? Not tryin’ to break in or nothin’?”

“I mean, not that I can tell, it seems like he’s just kind of ambling around,” Glenn said.

She cracked the door for another look.

“Looks like he might be drunk,” she added, watching him stumble and weave.

“Got a pistol in my glove-box,” Daryl suggested. “Could put the water in the back, then run him off for you.”

And while Glenn didn’t want her Camry wrecked or stolen, she wasn’t prepared to use the threat of gun violence on a harmless drunk either. She was still on her parents’ insurance and she had her keys, phone and wallet in the pockets of her jeans.

“We can just take your truck,” she said. “I can come back later. If anyone messes with it, I’ve got insurance.”

“You sure?” Daryl asked. “S’just one guy.”

“Yeah,” said Glenn sighing. “Let’s just go.”

This time Glenn swung the door all the way open and she and Daryl slipped out of the bar and out into the wee hours of the morning. The wet snarling in front of the building was just barely audible over the background noise of the city. In the distance, someone screamed.

She and Daryl moved quickly across the parking lot.

Daryl’s truck was an old blue and white Ford two-door with a bench seat. There were a few things under a tarp in the bag held down by rocks and bungee cables. He heaved the water into the truck bed with another grunt and fished his keys out of his pocket.

Glenn scooted around to the passenger side door and wasn’t surprised to find that the door stuck and creaked noisily when Daryl leaned across the seats to unlock it for her, before sliding the keys into the ignition.

The truck might’ve looked like a rust bucket on the outside, but when Daryl turned the keys the engine purred smoothly to life.

On the other side the parking lot, the man’s head lifted up like a dog catching scent of a squirrel. He veered drunkenly around the hood of her Camry and into the watered-down yellowy halo of the streetlight and Glenn got her first real look at him. 

Glenn clapped both hands over her mouth to keep from screaming, and when Daryl saw what had her so bugged out, he started swearing a blue streak. Throwing the truck into reverse and speeding out of the parking lot with more haste than even their fucked-up situation might’ve warranted.

“His face,” Glenn whispered.

“I saw it,” Daryl said, grim.

“How could he be walking around with his face like that?”

Daryl was quiet for a long moment.

“Ain’t that what the news was callin’ them, the dead ‘uns. Walkers?”

Glenn shivered.

“You think he was infected?”

“Maybe,” he said, scrubbing at his mouth. “He was somethin’.”

And when they turned onto the nearest main road, Glenn was very glad she’d made the impulsive decision to house Daryl for the night.

A few blocks down a barricade of sandbags and razor wire had been set up alongside a tank, and under a spotlight soldiers in fatigues and a few guys who might have been with the Atlanta PD S.W.A.T. team were firing into a small mob.

“Left,” she said, firmly. “We’ll go the long way.”

Daryl killed his headlights and made the turn without arguing.

The drive passed in tense silence, except for Glenn’s quiet directions. They didn’t turn the headlights back on.

Out in the streets, things were bad.

There was looting, rioting, the occasional fire in a busted out storefront, and people were fleeing in the night bundling into cars in their pajamas with hastily packed suitcases strapped to their roofs. And threaded in through all that chaos were people like the man who’d been wandering out behind Lucky’s. The walkers.

Just a few, nothing like that first big group the Guard had been shooting, but occasionally they’d roll through an intersection after a band of looters and see a hunched figure crouched over someone prone on the ground.

“Ain’t stoppin’,” Daryl said defensively, when they saw the first one, his hands white knuckled on the steering wheel. “They’re already bit.”

Glenn wanted to disagree, to argue that even if they were bitten, they were still living people, but the fact was even if their wounds weren’t that bad, they were still infected. She wasn’t a doctor. She didn’t know what to do for them.

“Put on your own oxygen mask first,” she told herself quietly, chewing on her thumb nail as she let her eyes slide over another dark corner.

Daryl darted another look at her but didn’t say anything.

“Here,” Glenn said when they finally rolled onto her street.

She handed over her key fob so he could let them into the underground garage. It was emptier than she’d ever seen it.

“312,” she said. “In the corner.”

“Like it matters,” he snorted, but he pulled into the space anyway.

He put the truck in park and reached over her lap to open the glove box pulling out the handgun and tucking it into the back of his pants with a little more comfort than Glenn was entirely comfortable with.

“In case,” he said, catching her look.

Glenn blew out a breath and nodded scraping her hands through her hair.

She and Daryl slid out of the truck and Daryl hefted one case of water onto his shoulder and left the other under the tarp. Glenn led the way, taking the stairs up from the parking garage since the idea of an elevator made her skin crawl right now.

There was no one in the stairwell but there was a brownish-red stain on the door to the lobby that looked suspiciously like blood.

“Everybody who’s runnin’ tonight already ran,” Daryl said. “Anyone left is hunkerin’ down. C’mon, girl, let’s get behind a door.”

Glenn let out a sharp breath but nodded, and got her keys out of her pocket.

Someone had left a bag full of kids toys in the hall. Her neighbors’ door just down the hall was wide open.

Glenn’s door opened as easily as it had closed when she left that afternoon. Her breakfast dishes were still soaking, piled up in her sink, her laptop was still on the coffee table in front of the couch, and her flip-flops were still in a heap by the closet door.

Her place was just as she’d left it.

It felt like a stranger’s apartment.

Daryl shut the door behind them and threw the lock and the chain and then set the case of water down, taking in her space with wary eyes like he thought there might be something explosive underneath the hand-painted purple sarong she’d hung up behind the couch to cover the ugly water stains on the uglier wallpaper. Kay had brought it back from her trip to Manila, right before she and Patrick got married. Before she’d left for college it’d hung over the day bed in her childhood bedroom.

“You want my boots off?” Daryl asked, fidgeting on her doormat.

Glenn swallowed.

“I think maybe you should leave them on,” she said.

Daryl nodded, but he didn’t move from her doorway until she moved further into her apartment in her sneakered feet.

The power must’ve gone out once already because the clock above the stove read midnight, but when Glenn fished her phone out of her pocket it showed that it was almost three am.

“You got service?” Daryl asked.

Glenn checked, but shook her head.

“No service. Network must be down.”

Daryl fished an ancient flip phone out of the pockets of his pockets, something cheap, maybe pre-paid, and set it down next to her phone, the gun too, after a long moment.

“You ever lived in Savannah?” he asked her, apropos of nothing. “Anywhere on the coast?”

Glenn shook her head.

“No, I was born and raised in Michigan. Why?”

“Was thinkin’ might be best to treat this like a hurricane,” he said, worrying his lower lip between his teeth. “Get more water stored while nothing’s contaminated. See what supplies you got. Pack a go-bag in case you need to get out in a hurry.”

Glenn could’ve kissed the man.

She needed something to do, and while the jury was still out on whether she’d sleep again ever, she could definitely fish the re-usable water bottles out from under the sink and fill them and all three of her pots with water.

While she was doing that Daryl went through her cupboards and discovered that she lived on instant noodles, rice, and leftover pizza, bought toiletries in bulk to save money, and had a toolbox made up of a half-empty pack of command hooks, a screw driver, hammer, and flashlight.

Glenn, who’d always thought she was a pretty practical girl, winced under his increasingly judgmental looks when he discovered that she had no first-aid kit, camping gear, batteries, duct tape, or spare blankets besides the decorative throw on the couch.

She was only able to redeem herself a little when she produced a big box of sweet-smelling candles and books of matches from the bar.

When they’d completely ransacked her apartment for anything useful, and Glenn had her backpack packed with in-case-of-emergency stuff, they both dropped down next to each other on her saggy blue couch and tried not to listen to the sounds of the world going to hell outside.

**Author's Note:**

> I just started writing and this came out, let me know what you guys think!


End file.
